Sapphire RX 480 Nitro + OC 4GB & 8GB Review

We supplement our analysis of AMD partner RX 480 cards today by looking at the two Sapphire Nitro+ OC models, in 4GB and 8GB capacities. The Sapphire cards ship with custom cooling solutions, out of the box clock enhancements, LED lighting and PCB improvements. At price points of £199.99 and £249.95 inc vat for the 4GB and 8GB cards respectively, they certainly look to be competitively priced.

The new AMD Radeon RX 480 is built on the FinFET 14nm process. For Polaris, AMD selected Samsung and Global Foundries 14nm FinFET based process technology, the densest foundry process available. FinFET transistors are crucial to reduce power consumption while enabling operating voltages which are 150mV lower than the previous generation.

GPU

Radeon R9 290X

Radeon R9 390

Radeon R9 390X

Radeon R9 Fury

Radeon R9
Fury X

Radeon RX 480

Shader Units

2816

2560

2816

3584

4096

2304

ROPs

64

64

64

64

64

32

Graphics Processor

Hawaii

Hawaii

Hawaii

Fiji

Fiji

Ellesmere

Transistors

6200M

6200M

6200M

8900M

8900M

5700M

Memory Size

4GB

8GB

8GB

4GB

4GB

4GB/8GB

Memory Bus Width

512 bit

512 bit

512 bit

4096 bit

4096 bit

256 bit

Core Clock

1000 mhz

1000 mhz

1050 mhz

1000 mhz

1000 mhz

up to 1266mhz

Memory Clock

1250mhz

1500mhz

1500mhz

500mhz

500mhz

2000mhz

We can’t really comprehend how Sapphire ended up with 1,306mhz and 1,342mhz for the core clocks of the 4GB and 8GB cards respectively, they must have been throwing darts at a board. Memory speeds of the GDDR5 on the 4GB model are clocked down, from 2,000 mhz (8Gbps effective) to 1,750 mhz (7 Gbps effective). The 4GB version ships with Hynix GDDR5 memory, the 8GB version Samsung GDDR5 memory.

Additionally the cards have a dual BIOS with ‘quiet’ or ‘boost’ mode.

Quiet mode downclocks the core on both cards to 1,266mhz, further reducing fan noise. We test both cards today in the fully fledged, fast mode, as we do with all the samples we receive. I believe that the overwhelming majority of KitGuru readers will want to game with the card running at full speed.